This week at the Blue Tokai Book Club, we’re curling up with ‘Volcano’- The Collected Poems of Eunice de Souza, handpicked for us by the lovely folks at Trilogy Bookshop & Library.
A beloved professor at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, De Souza writes with unflinching clarity, mining her own life for truths that singe.
The opening poem, “Catholic Mother”, strikes with quiet force. “Marriages Are Made” exposes societal expectations of women with wry, unsparing precision. “Sweet Sixteen” and “Feeding the Poor at Christmas” cut with humour like a scalpel, playful, pointed, and piercing.
With “Bequest”, De Souza confronts herself with startling honesty. She longs to be a “wise woman”, smiling endlessly and emptily like a plastic flower. In that candour, she reveals that self-love is radical and necessary, a gift we give ourselves and even our enemies. The real reckoning, she reminds us, begins within.
Reading Volcano feels like holding a mirror to all the silences: literary, personal, and inherited, we let persist. Her work makes us think about faith, womanhood, and the unsaid.
You leave her poems a little scorched but also a little more awake.
Reading along? Tell us your favourite excerpts in the comments.
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Posted on : 25 Nov 2025 5:56 PM
